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i love this thread!!!!!!! i was out hunting yesterday and being how i used up all my vac time on archery elk i was going to shoot the first buck i seen, well..... i spotted a pig of a buck at 1730 at 900 yrds away down hill. i tried to get a stalk on him but the side of the draw i was on was a thick mess of buck brush and aspens, the other side open, he was feeding in a small clearing on fresh green grass. not wanting to spook him i held back and plan on going in on monday morning on otherside to make a more silent aproach. after seeing him i passed on 4 2x2 and 1 small 4x. i suddenly found more time to hunt after seeing him. the smaller bucks would have been easy to kill, no skill on my part, getting to this guy however will take some patience and luck. last day of hunt ill take one of thoe kamakazi bucks.

I figured out the meat I got from the 2 antelope I just got cost just about $10 a pound. Tags, diesel, food, seasonings vac bags ect I used processing it. If I hadnt got the reduced price doe tag and only got the buck I estimate it would of came out to $15 a pound. I decided to charge most of it to I REALLY WANTED TO GO HUNTING and that brought it down to about $1.50 a pound so I got a great deal on filling the freezer once I calculated it that way!

I consider myself a 90% meat hunter and 10% trophy hunter. My goal each year is to fill the freezer while building my preference points to eventually get drawn for a unit/ranch where I can hopefully harvest a trophy buck/bull. I already have horns on the wall for moose, mtn goat, bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, and antelope (all taken here in CO), so I really don't need another set of horns and would rather concentrate on filling the freezer instead. However, there is always the urge to improve on what I have on the wall, so I play the preference point system, which can take years to accomplish (it took 17 years to draw my bull moose tag). If I feel the need for a challenge then I go archery hunting, which I have done for several years with minimal success, but it is definitely a challenge that you learn to respect. Fortunately in CO you can get 2 elk tags per year, so I often split my tags with a low success either sex archery hunt, and then get a cow tag for a rifle season in which I have been very successful (I am currently 100% in filling my cow tag in the past 5 years - including this year). I hunt primarily to fill the freezer, and filling spots on the wall are a distant 2nd (the only thing I'm missing right now is a CO whitetail buck, of which most are on private land and may be a hard tag to fill)

Well, that's a good reason to save the antlers. I would imagine they don't want them too big so they can be handled easier?

There are some big blind kids too, but from my own personal knowledge, I do not remember anyone donating any huge elk antlers. However, if that was the case, the antlers could either be blunted, or the tips protected with garden hose, etc., like when shipping. Just to be clear, the kids are allowed to touch and feel the antlers, but there are a sufficient number of docents around to ensure their safety. They are not allowed to wave them around like they are in the flag core.

well....... on fri night i took my 7 year old boy up with me, from the rd we spotteda nice buck walking up thru the trees, 100yrds away. i drove to other side of trees and we got out and off the rd and watch the tree line, this buck walks out, hes been poorly shot, limping real bad. wasnt a monster wasnt much wider than ears but was rediculously tall and had some mass. he was about 400 yrds out at this point and walking slow. i found a rest and shot, deer was nowhere to be seen. we walked up the steep hill realizing i left my light in the truck and it was getting dark fast, couldnt see any blood trail being how dark it was. came back up next mid morn to look. found blood trail that led to gut pile so we walked over the ridge and started glassing, son spotted a small buck with his binos on next ridge over so with his excitment we made a stalk, sun was in deers face and we had total advantage in wide open. to end the story, that was the smallest buck ive ever packed out of the mountains. we hiked out at 8, very dark, son loved every sec of it. i gotta say....... im an antler man thru and thru but this last couple years hunting with my son along has mae it less important to me i guess. when he turns 12 i think thatll change

Ivorytip....great story. Reminds me of a hunt I did here in Colorado 6 or so years ago. My hunting pard and I both used 7 points to get a Ranching for Wildlife tag for elk (big mistake!!!). The hunt was not going well for a number of reasons that we had no control over. I was watching an area that we had seen lots of tracks in near the fence between the ranch we were hunting and the NF. I was about ready to move when I saw a nice, young spike bull limping down the game trail I was watching. Someone had broke one of his front legs with a really poorly placed shot. Unusual too because the only place a spike was legal was on the RFW ranch we were hunting and I had heard not shooting at all for a couple of days. I knew he couldn't live the winter, so to make a long story short I shot him in the neck and filled my tag with a great eating elk.

Ethically I guess i did the right thing, but was a let down for my expectations.

Meat yes...trophy no.........and the elk was not suffering anymore.

Colorado Cowboy
Cowboy Action Shooter; Endowment Life Member-NRA
The Original Rocket Scientist-Retired
"My Father always considered a walk in the mountains as the equivalent of church going."
Aldous Huxley